Tiffany Meuret’s A Flood of Posies is labelled as a science fiction/thriller that unfortunately doesn’t hit the mark as being science fiction nor a thriller; it is more a piece of fiction that tries to be science fiction.
In the year 2025, a flood claims the lives of millions, but two sisters end up beating the odds and surviving the initial part of the disaster. Sisters Thea and Doris are polar opposites with Thea being a drug addict who has turned to the streets, while Doris seems to have her life together with her husband. The two sisters end up with each other at the start of a flash flood and have to rely on each other to survive even though they haven’t gotten along in decades and are constantly arguing. As the story progresses, the story jumps between before the flood, during the flood, and after the flood with Meuret trying to intertwine the story, which ends up becoming quite confusing instead of engaging. Meuret also puts in sea monsters that happened to show up when they flood began, however, this feels more forced than actually part of the development of the story. While the overall idea of A Flood of Posies is interesting and touches on important themes the plot, narration, and characters are lacking.
Thea and Doris are shown to be polar opposites yet they share almost the same personality and voice, which ends up lacking depth to the overall story. The supporting characters throughout the novel also lack personality and are forgettable. The reader is introduced to Sestra at the beginning of A Flood of Posies and it isn’t until later that it’s brought up that Sestra is in fact Thea a year after the flood took place. While I discovered later on that this was stated in the synopsis, this was very confusing whilst reading as it seemed like these were two completely different people until it is shown to the reader that this was in fact the same person. Meuret is very descriptive to the point that she drowns out any dialogue and jumps quickly from the past to the present leaving the reader feeling a little lost.
With that said, something that Meuret does really well in A Flood of Posies is that she brings up some important and tough themes. Meuret uses the characters of Thea and Doris to show what happens when young children are subjected to years of abuse and trauma and how that influences what happens when they grow up. Thea turns to drugs to escape whereas Doris uses perfectionism to escape the same issues. Meuret uses the sea monsters and the recurring theme of monsters throughout the story as a metaphor for Thea and Doris’s life but this can be easily overlooked by readers.
Meuret is incredibly descriptive and dialogue is lacking throughout the story. At times it feels like the author is telling the reader what is happening instead of showing them. However, this isn’t consistent and there are points where Meuret shows instead of telling. The story jumps around a lot and this can have the reader rereading areas or having to jump back to see when things changed in the story. While this wasn’t for me, the story was interesting enough to keep me wanting to know what was going to happen. A Flood of Posies may leave the reader with more questions than answers as there are loose ends throughout the entire story that never really seem to get tied up.
A Flood of Posies is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of February 9th 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
It’s 2025.
Sisters, Doris and Thea, exist worlds apart, despite living within a few miles of one another. Doris with her regular home and regular husband and regular job, and Thea slinking along the edges of society, solitary and invisible. When a storm of biblical proportions strikes, the wayward sisters are begrudgingly forced together as the rain waters rise, each attempting to survive both the flood and each other.
One year later, Thea—now calling herself Sestra—floats throughout a ravaged, flood soaked world. Her former life drowned beneath metric tons of water, she and her only companion, Robert, battle starvation, heatstroke, and the monstrous creatures called Posies that appeared alongside the flood. When they run across what they assume to be an abandoned tugboat, their journey takes a new turn, and the truth about the flood and the monsters seems more intricately linked to Thea’s past then she may realize.
